Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1887-03-05

I COult |shLllhildilS are always -. hhS
take a rest; let your mind lie fallow;
don't work so MUCH and seem to
think that brain work especially is a
constant drain upon ones vital capital.
Others, | believe more truly, look upon
idlenesS as the real thief of time and
point to the great workers who have
lived to a grand old age, Mathema-
ticians claim that even the absorbing
mental process of working out diff
cult problems is conducive to lon
gevity. Leibnitz, they tell us, lived
his seventy years; Euler his seventy
six; Lagrange his scvcnty-seven; La
place his seventy-eight wears; while
Sir Isaac Newton died at eiShty-tive,
Plato at cighty-two, Archinedes at
seventy-five, and the somewhat mythi-
cal Pythagoras nj ninety, Some of
these ancientS, however, We're lot hnl-
inent mathematician, hut may be
classed as general philosophers, natu-
raj OF metaphysical. Poets do not al
ways die before their time, rs Keats
and Byron and Arthur Hugh Clough
did. On the contrary, the much
abused Tennyson, will survive, lproph-
esy, all the terrible criticisms ON his
conservatism, which have been made
about his last poem, aud perhaps most
severely blythe eN-Prime Minister Glad
stone, who conferred the Earldom upon
him. But taking the poets of all times
and countries | find hat Pindar lived
TO so, ~Sophocles to 80, Euripidcs to IS.
Simonides to SO, Michael Angelo, who
was not only poet, but painter, sculptor
and architect, to 90, Godfrey Chaucer,
''the father Of English poetry to Il,
William Wordsworth to so and Walter
Savage Landor to SO. How Il man of
Landor's furious temper could live ; o
long is Il miracle.
No life, one would think, could be
more exhaustive than that of Il Judge
who has to sit for hours together, day
after day, in a crowded court room;
yet many of the Lord Chancellors and
Chief Justices of England, as well as
Chief Justices of our own country, have
lived far beyond the three score years
and ten.
Sleep is as great a medicine and sup
port of the nervous System-and life,
being interpreted, mean the nervous
system, neither more nor lcSs-aS food,
probably much more so if WE may
Judge by some animals that subsist for
all the winter months on sleep
alone. Yet many strong persons who
do not know what it is to lie awake all
night die prematurcly, while | have
myself met in Brooklyn some persons
who could not get an hours rest in a
week who have gone ON living with
wonderful tenacity.
Dear old Mrs, Delaney used some
times to eat nothingfor days, lie awake
all nights for weeks together, cry her
old eyes out with the half memories of
the days gone by, and yet she exceeded
a century of life by nearly a year. 1t
is a remarkable fact hal in every Eu-
ropean country statisticianS of unqucs-
tionable character for ~vcracity have
sometimes denied point blank that any
man or woman has attained or exceed
ed the age of 100 years. The greatest
of these longevity skeptics was Sir
George Cornwall Lewis; who died
some twenty years ago. He was, ii !
remember, Chancellor of the %EXchequer
for two or three terms under Lord Pal
merston. At Christ Church, Oxford, he
was a Double First and was regarded at
the Union Debating Society as the most
reliable authority for facts. A Chan
cellor of the ExcheQucr is the last mar
in the world, one would suppose, to
travel outside the narrow boundaries
of statistics, and his exactncsS of mind
as a statesman, made his skcpticism
about old age the more remarkable.
Had he lived in the time of Cicero he
would probably have told that eulogist
of longevity that there had never been
any thing of the kind on this planet
and that no human being had ever
crept out of his cradle II exceeded the
nursery experience "whcn love and
laughter both We're young There
are some persons like the great ''doubt-
ing judge Lord Peterborough, who
repel the best proved facts with an a
pri0ri theory Of probabilities. Those
who don't feel like living out their
century are apt to think that no one
else has a mind to do SO. Yet | can
personally swear to having known a
man aged ll2, and although the fact
seemed nominated in the bond Of
his ancient mariners face and "cspcc-
tally the parchments of his wrinklcd
brow, the parish church books, which |
searched with the disintercsted help of
both rector and sexton, proved the date
OF birth, of baptism, of confirmation and
of SO many hymeneal devotions
at the old communion table as
would have made the Prophet
Smith or Brigham Young turn
green with envy, But some investiga-
tors are as credulous As Mr.. Pickwick
when he paid five pounds for the anti
quarian stone in the good old Town of
Rochester and discovered late that the
cross upon it was not quite so ancient
as the cross of Constantine. Like
Henry Thomas Buckle. Sir George
Cornewall Lewis first became enthused
with a theory and then set to work to
make history and statistics accord with
it. Yet even he could scarcely deny
that Martin Joseph Routh, president of